


Rumour Has It

by Echo (Lyrecho)



Series: we are made of star-stuff [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: #theprinceandthepauper, AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cor Tries (He Really Really Does), Friendship & Fluff, Gen, Highschool years, Irony, Oneshot, Regis is A Dad(TM), Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 07:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9710132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Echo
Summary: “Who are you dating?” He asked blandly, sending a look Cor’s way. His marshall simply hunched his shoulders and scraped a highlighter across a line of text probably harder than was necessary– leave me out of your drama, old man.“A girl? From your class?”Noctis’ scowl only deepened, and Regis had to supress a smile.“I said we’re not dating,” he said. “And no, it’s not a girl – but it is a girl’s fault.”Regis tilted his head. “You’re dating a boy?”“No, I – I’m not dating anyone,” he said, and threw his arms up in disbelief.In which Noctis cannot believe this is his life, Regis and Cor are total Dads(TM), and Prompto just wants this all to be over, like, yesterday.|Tumblr||Twitter|





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! Read the fics that come before this one in the series first!

“We’re _not_ dating.”

Whatever Regis was expecting his son to say when he barged into the dining room, murderous scowl affixed to his face and each step threatening an earthquake, it wasn’t _that_.

He blinked at his son from over his bowl of cornflakes – no matter that it wasn’t ‘kingly,’ he liked them, thank you very much, _Clarus_ , and it wasn’t like there was time for much else, these days – and beside him Cor looked up from the documents he was highlighting passages in just long enough to raise one eyebrow at Noctis.

Placing his spoon down, Regis cleared his throat. It was clear to him that Noctis wasn’t going away – not until he’d let him rant a bit, at least. “Who are you dating?” He asked blandly, sending a look Cor’s way. His marshall simply hunched his shoulders and scraped a highlighter across a line of text probably harder than was necessary – _leave me out of your drama, old man_. “A girl? From your class?”

Noctis’ scowl only deepened, and Regis had to supress a smile.

“I said we’re _not dating_ ,” he said. “And no, it’s not a girl – but it is a girl’s _fault_.”

Regis tilted his head. “You’re dating a boy?”

“No, I – I’m _not dating anyone_ ,” he said, and threw his arms up in disbelief. “Some girl started spreading rumours that the reason I turned her down is because Prompto and I are dating, and now _look_.” He held his phone out, and jabbed at the screen with one finger. “We’re _trending_.”

Cor tensed when his son was finished speaking – Regis would have reassured him that whatever was going on, the PR department would take care of it, but he was too busy squinting at the screen where his son was pointing - **#theprinceandthepauper** was written there, about midway down a list of other terms Regis was pretty much equally clueless about.

He frowned at his son. “I’m not quite sure I understand what that is meant to mean,” he said, and Noctis rolled his eyes.

“That’s what they started calling us,” he said. “When the girl made the first post, she said that Prompto was a scholarship student that lived in the slums and that the only reason I was ‘dating’ him is because I was trying to make my image _look_ better – like I’ve _ever_ cared for anything like that – because why _else_ would I choose to hang out with _my best friend_ instead of date _her?_ ” He was gritting his teeth as he said this, anger burning in his eyes; his hands clenched into fists and shaking as he stood there.

Regis had never before seen his son so incensed. “Teenage girls can be foolish,” he said evenly. “I wouldn’t judge her too harshly, or feel too much concern over these rumours – they’ll fade with time, as they all do.” He grinned. “You should hear some of the things the press came out with about _me_ when I was your age – ” Cor’s glare bored into the side of his head. “Or, maybe this isn’t the time.”

“It’s _not the same_ ,” Noctis ground out. “Prompto is a _scholarship student_. He got in on his scores and the fact that his record was _clean_. If rumours start spreading that make it look like he’s involved in something that will make the crown prince implicit in some sort of scandal, he’ll be expelled on grounds of slander.”

Regis stared, and realised just how angry his son _really was_ with this situation – speaking as formally as he was; he only got like that when he was _beyond_ furious, because he’d learned a _long_ time ago that tantrums and rage would get him absolutely nowhere in life – for a prince, the ability to explain things clearly and concisely and then convince people over to his point of view was key. “This really bothers you?”

Mutely, Noctis nodded. “ _I_ don’t mind so much, at least for me – but Prompto’s not good with lots of attention focused in on him. He hasn’t come to school in two days, not since the rumours started. He says he’s waiting for it all to die down before he comes back.”

Regis sighed, and made to put his spoon down – his cornflakes would have gone soggy by now, anyway – but before he could speak, and reassure his son that he’d have a press statement or something of the like released, Cor shoved a veritable pile of paperwork at him.

If he’d been anyone else, Regis would have yelped as he automatically moved to clutch the stack of loose papers – battle plans and contingencies and inventories and registries of the refugees that still continued to poor into Insomnia – to his chest; he was the king, however, so he didn’t – simply squinted up at his marshall and tried to gauge his mood. “Cor?” He asked cautiously.

“I’ll finish those for you later.” Cor’s reply was mechanical, as stiff as the man himself as he pushed himself back from the table, chair scraping against the floor. “I have things I need to do.”

Regis blinked as he stalked to the door like a large bird with its feathers well and truly ruffled. “…Okay?” He said doubtfully.

Noctis stared as he went by, too – likely he’d never seen Cor acting like that before. “What’s with him?” He asked, anger in him fading away for the first time since he’d entered the room.

“I don’t know,” Regis said honestly, and gestured to the chair across from him when his son looked over. “Have you had breakfast yet?” He asked. “With Cor leaving these unfinished, I’m sure I can take some time to eat with you.”

Noctis lit up, smiling the first truly genuine smile Regis had seen out of him in a while – and all but skipped to the seat. “You don’t mind if I’m late to school?”

Regis smiled. “Not just this once,” he said.

|[-O-]|

Cor tried not to let his rising anger rule his driving as he turned through highways and streets to the little unit Sol’s son lived in – road rage was a bad habit of his, if one he’d never admit to and one he never let show at any point except when he was by himself.

 _Your son,_ he thought sourly, addressing his thoughts to a woman that was long gone, one way or another, _is just as much of a handful as you_ ever _were_.

At first, those few weeks after Sol had deposited Prompto safely to Cor and Insomnia before fleeing the land behind the wall herself – she’d never told him _why_ – he’d thought that keeping the boy safe would be _easy_. They’d trained them _hard_ in Niflheim, he at least knew enough to keep himself _alive_ if Cor helped, right? In the end, it turned out they’d both been about as clueless as each other as to how this whole ‘childhood’ thing was supposed to go – especially while keeping it a secret from literally _everyone_ that had ever interacted with Cor, lest they do a little digging and found out that the refugee child he spent time with didn’t actually technically exist in any of their records – but they’d _managed_. Hell, Prompto had even managed to keep his grades high enough that he’d earned himself a scholarship to one of the Crown City’s most prestigious academies; the same one the prince would be attending after the contract with his tutors ended, and Cor had pulled _strings_ to make sure they would be in the same class.

He’d simply done because that way it would be easier to watch over them – and, for the fact that if anyone spotted him talking to Prompto after that they would see him talking to one of the prince’s classmates, rather than just some random kid.

Now, he was close to regretting that – because one side effect he hadn’t considered of putting them in the same class was that they’d become _friends_. He’d thought that Prompto would have been smart enough to avoid putting himself so much as at _risk_ of falling into the public eye in anyway, but apparently he’d underestimated the lack of logic a lonely child could hold.

As he pulled into the drive of the complex and walked up to the door of Prompto’s unit, he wondered on just what it was he was going to say – he was far from any sort of father or parental figure – he honestly didn’t know if Prompto cared for him at all – and so he had no real _right_ to just walk into his home and _lecture_ him –

But if _he_ didn’t, then who would? It wasn’t like Prompto had any _other_ adult figures of authority in his life.

Carefully, he knocked at the door – if Noctis was right, and Prompto hadn’t been going to school, then there was nowhere else he would be, as far as Cor knew – it wasn’t like the kid had a job (yet), and Insomnia had strict enough law enforcement that if he was out anywhere (with the exception of maybe the slums) he’d be written up for truancy – Prompto wasn’t stupid enough to get a mark on his record for something so small and unimportant.

It took a few minutes, but eventually Cor heard the tell-tale muffled clicks of locks and chains being undone on the other side of the door – he would have yelled at the brat for just opening the door for anyone without checking who it was, but it had been long enough that he figured that the kid probably _had_ taken the time to see who it was, even if _he_ hadn’t sensed anything.

“Cor,” Prompto said as he pulled the door open and blinked at him, blue eyes wide and attempting to project some sort of innocence he could clearly tell Cor could see through – he was supposed to be at school, why _else_ would Cor be here?

Cor crossed his arms over his chest, and stared the kid down. It was a little harder to do, now that the kid had shed a lot of the weight and started running to build muscle back up – eating healthier and exercising with more regularity had given the kid an unfair amount of growth spurts. He was still shorter than Cor, though, barely coming up to just below his shoulders. He raised an unimpressed brow, and didn’t let his face crack at all as Prompto made a show of cowering back behind the door. He’d _taught_ the kid how to act as unassuming as possible.

Puppy eyes weren’t going to break him.

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?” He asked leadingly. “Like, say, _school?_ ”

Prompto winced.

“Are these rumours really getting to you that much?” Cor asked. “Prompto, you know you’re not like those other kids, right – you can’t let _anything_ affect your grades or attendance.”

Prompto glared at him a little through the strands of hair that had fallen into his face when he’d stared at the ground, which was honestly kind of comforting – Cor didn’t know if it was because of how the kid had been raised in Niflheim for that first almost-decade of his life or just some aspect of his personality alone, but Prompto – for all his volume and colours and _eagerness_ – was actually an incredibly quiet kid. Neat, obedient. He was the complete and total opposite of a problem child, even if he dressed like a punk and snuck into dangerous and closed off area because he ‘just wanted to get a few cool shots, Cor.’

Honestly, that was probably _why_ these rumours were getting to him so much – kid was a softie, and an anxious thing, besides; he probably thought that the prince was going to leave him for ‘causing’ so much trouble.

He sighed. “Look, kid – I’ll give you today, but you _have_ to go back tomorrow.”

Dismay flickered across Prompto’s face. “But tomorrow – ” he cut himself off, and sighed. “Yes, Cor.”

There was an undercurrent of ‘ _sir_ ’ to his agreement that Cor didn’t like, but mostly the frown that crossed his face was one of thought – as he worked back through his mind and tried to figure out what was so special about the next day.

 _Ah_ , he thought, mere seconds later, as it came to him. _The Festival_. And then, he smirked.

“Really?” He asked. “You’re so worried about the Festival of Lovers?”

Prompto scowled at him. “The _entire school_ thinks I’m dating Noct,” he pointed out. “Disappearing all week only to come back on the one day a year _dedicated_ to couples is _not_ going to dissuade that idea.”

“Or, it could totally do that,” Cor pointed out. “I’m sure the two of you together can make it very clear that you are _not_ dating one another.”

Prompto blinked at him, and narrowed his eyes. “ _How_ ,” he said doubtfully, his tone of voice flat.

Cor grinned. “Tell the prince to accept the chocolates and cards that come his way tomorrow.”

Prompto blinked.

And then he grinned, too.

|[-O-]|

Noctis could not _believe_ he was doing this.

“This is stupid,” he muttered, and from the seat in front of him, Prompto huffed out what he could _hear_ was an exasperated breath – and with his back to him, he couldn’t see it, but he was _sure_ his friend rolled his eyes.

Sure, the plan seemed – mostly – foolproof. That didn’t change the fact that the two of them had still been the object of scrutiny for the entire student body since they’d bumped into each other on campus that morning, nor the fact that Noctis was clearly being _thrown to the sharks_ by a traitorous friend that apparently cared _nothing_ for him.

He glared at Prompto’s back, and the girls (and some boys) around him began to whisper – maybe they thought there was trouble in paradise.

 _Good_ , he thought savagely, and slumped down in his seat to kick out at Prompto’s chair.

His friend jumped, and then looked over at him with brows quirked, _what exactly are you trying to do?_

Noctis grinned, and kicked the chair again – at least, until it occurred to him (courtesy of the sudden intensity of the whispers) that he may not have been doing the best job of convincing his classmates that he was _not_ in love with his best friend.

Quickly, he straightened in his chair, and began to gather as much strength as he could for whenever lunchtime would come to pass – because it would be _then_ that the vultures would swarm, and at that current time, he only had so much strength of will to burn through. He’d literally just _die_ if they all came at him at once.

-x-

When lunch finally rolled around, Prompto completely vanished – smart of him, but also part of their plan. People would probably be at least _slightly_ reluctant to just come up to Noctis in order to offer him…well, offerings, if they thought his ‘boyfriend’ was hovering about the area, too.

Mostly, Noctis thought Prompto just agreed to go work on his homework in the library because he didn’t want to deal, which was a total violation of the best friend’s code. They were _supposed_ to suffer _together._

“…um,” the voice was soft, and when Noctis turned, he couldn’t help but be grateful that the girl that stood by his side with a box held outstretched in shaking hands _wasn’t_ the one that had started the rumours in the first place. Regardless of their plan to get the rumours to just _die_ , he would _never_ accept any sort of festival gift from her. “Your Highness, I got these chocolates for you?” Her words ended in a question, high pitched and anxious, and Noctis smiled at her as reassuringly as he could.

“Of course,” he said gently, and reached out to take the box from her.

She all but threw it at him – he held it against his chest with an _oof_ as it impacted. “But, um – won’t your – Prompto, I mean, your boyfriend, won’t he mind?”

The entire room felt still – frozen and heavy – as everyone blatantly stopped pretending that they _weren’t_ listening in on the edge of their seats; Noctis wasn’t affected by it, however – not when this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, just offered up to him on a silver platter – or, rather, a box of chocolates.

“Prompto and I aren’t dating,” he said, as bluntly – as loudly – as he could manage. “So it definitely won’t bother him at all.”

Really, he should have expected the effect his words would have had – a brief moment of silence, and then he was _swarmed_.

|[-O-]|

After lunch, Prompto didn’t really have any real way of knowing whether or not their plan had worked – you couldn’t use phones during class sessions, and the periods after lunch were for elective classes – and considering his classes were all photography and art related – contrasting Noct’s political and philosophical choices – there wasn’t really any way for him to _talk_ to Noctis to figure it out one way or another; they were in completely different blocks of the school.

The afternoon flew by, though – and before he even knew it, the final bell was ringing, and Prompto found himself moving through the halls of the school along with the crowd – and none of them were staring at him.

That was…good. Probably. He thought.

“You _owe_ me.”

Noct’s voice came from behind him, and he jumped almost a full foot in the air – turned, to see Noctis holding literally _dozens_ of boxes of chocolates piled one on top of another in his arms.

Prompto _stared_. “Wow,” he said. “ _Someone’s_ popular.”

Noctis snorted, and dumped half of his burden into Prompto’s arms. “You’re helping me eat these,” he said, and Prompto laughed.

“You’re actually going to eat _every_ box of chocolates you accepted?” he asked, and shook his head. “I mean, I think accepting them was enough – it’s not like the girls would _know_ if you gave them away, or got rid of them.”

“ _I_ would,” Noctis grumbled. “And besides, I like chocolate.” He scowled. “To waste it like you’re suggesting would be _blasphemy_.”

Prompto snorted. “Sure thing,” he said. “So. Where are we going to eat these, then?”

Noctis tilted his head, as if considering. “Your place?” he suggested. “We can make a night of it. Order a pizza and play some King’s Knight – you have the console version, right?”

“PC,” Prompto corrected. “But they’re literally the same thing, and we can just hook my computer to the television.”

“Then it’s a plan.” Noctis smiled, and Prompto couldn’t help but smile back.

* * *

 

> _Nirial watched as the prince and Argentum left the school grounds, laughing and shoving at each other even though they both held a literal armful of chocolates._
> 
> _“Looks like the prince was just being nice earlier,” she said to Amy, who stood on tiptoes beside her, craning her neck to get a better look. “Those two are_ totally _dating.”_


End file.
